Types of Social Communication Programs and Websites

November 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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When someone thinks of social chat programs, they think instant messengers. But there’s more to social communication programs than IMs. There are lots of different types of communication programs such as chat rooms, IMs, blogs, video chatting, social networking websites and more.

Instant messaging and chat rooms are some of the most popular communication methods on the Internet. They allow the users to chat with one or more other people at once, instantly sending messages back and forth. IMs like Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN, Skype and Trillian are popular and all of them have similar features including a “buddy” list to add contacts to. Some of them even support chatting between different programs. Video chats are usually included with IM programs, but there are specialized programs like Skype which can chat with anyone world wide. Almost all of them are free download software.

Blogs might as well be an Internet phenomenon with how popular they are. Everyone has a blog of their own, even businesses. Blogs can be about anything, but the most popular subjects seem to be about social networking itself. Businesses keep blogs to send out updates about their software.

Social websites like MySpace, Facebook and many dating sites are used for networking and communication. These sites combine instant messaging, private messaging and blogging and are known as social networking sites. The website ties users together so when they post a single update, it has a wave effect — going out to friends and then friends of friends and so on. Businesses use social networking sites to quickly spread word of their software.

Social communication is vital for a lot of businesses and has been a huge part of keeping in touch with not only new clients, but other businesses. The Internet isn’t limited to your neighborhood or your country — its limit is anywhere in the world where a satellite can reach.

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Social Networking and Divorce

October 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Social Networks and Divorce

Legal experts advise their clients in cases of divorce to go on a social networking blackout. If you’re in a divorce, stay away from sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin; there has been a strong – and bad – precedent of people going on those sites during divorces, and giving up information that is then used by the spouse or partner they are divorcing. Divorcing parties have a bad habit of sharing their bad news with others, which can estrange friends and family, as well as motivate third parties to supply the opponents’ legal teams with dirt to help them in their divorce case. In one instance, a spiteful woman made a Facebook post in which she bragged about her ability to make her husband spend money by bringing up frivolous – and devastating – false accusations of child abuse. After ‘lol-ing’ about her criminal intent, the divorce court reversed custody of her children back to the father, giving her only visitation. Just desserts, as some might say.

Facebook Causing Divorce?

Some people have used sites like Facebook to find evidence for ending a relationship or initiating a divorce. A woman in Florida recently saw that her new husband was a bigamist; via his Facebook friends, she discovered that he had a second wife and an entire second family in a state he regularly visited for business trips. Facebook is so efficient at tracking friends and activities that people are often unconscious about how their postings will be broadcasted to the world at large. But some people say that if the way in which social networking sites strip bare a person’s secrets, that it will force them to be more honest in their dealings with others. Another view is that a social networking profile can be maintained strictly to give a false impression of that person’s ‘candid’ life.

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Expanding use of the Internet

September 19, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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The internet, once only used for defense and scientific purposes, is now widely used by people around the world for an ever-increasing set of tasks. For example, the internet has become a great way to conduct ecommerce. Business models such as those of Amazon and Ebay have profited enormously from this possibility by allowing users around the world to bid on, or purchase, particular products from the comfort of their own home. This also often allows customers to cut out the middle men in purchasing certain custom made or rare niche goods.

Besides electronic commerce, internet has paved the way for social networking services such as MySpace, primarily used by a younger demographic, Facebook, which is popular among college students and older individuals, LinkedIn, a very important tool for professionals, and innumerable others. These services use the internet to allow people to stay in touch in spite of the vast distances that might physically separate them. In some cases, you can even be in the same room and play games on such social networking sites. Regardless, the door is open to a lot of social networking possibilities.

The internet has also meant a great boon for video games. Games like Halo are great fun, but without other people to play them with, they become dull over the course of time. You can’t beat the same level 20 times and continue to have the same amount of enjoyment which you had when you first pulled it out of the box. Internet gaming through services on consoles such as the Xbox 360, the Wii and the Playstation 3 have allowed users to connect with and challenge other like minded users around in the world in bouts of friendly competition or cooperative play – once again, without having to leave the comfort of their own respective houses.

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Social Networking Community

June 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Unless you have been living under a rock since the last few years, chances are that you have encountered a couple of social networks and have signed up with at least one of these on the internet. Social networks have brought a new breed of users who are as young as 12 or as old as centenarians. Social Networks saw their birth around 2000 with the birth of dating sites; though these sites kept shy users away, it did gave rise to social networks such as Facebook, Orkut and Myspace from 2003.

Gone are the days when people spent long hours in chat rooms chatting to complete strangers, now it’s friends only with whom people spend time. Social networks are the reason for a completely new breed of phones which stay connected 24 hours a day. They have given a completely new method to monitor citizen and customer satisfaction for many companies. They have literally altered the fabric of the internet with majority of users on the internet being Social Networkers. A study showed the there are about 300 social networking sites with many being user specific such as Facebook for general friends, Myspace becoming more accustomed to music related tastes, Xanga a blog based social networking site and LinkedIn being directed towards professionals.

If you give a thought to the security implications and personal space intrusions these social networks have, that can send a chill down the spine. With all your information available on these sites, from your phone number, videos and photographs to your likes and dislikes, it makes a social network user vulnerable to all sorts of attacks from identity thieves to child molesters to stalkers. It is an easy way for these criminals to know when you are out of town. It is also easy for your boss to know when you lie about a sick leave and leave updates which can be easily the cause for you to get fired in some cases, or be the cause for a divorce.

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Social Networking

March 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

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Social networking services are one of the largest and most influential categories of sites on the Internet. They connect people based on interests, activities, or real world relationships. Beginning with chat rooms and forums in the formative years of the Web, online networking evolved by the 1990′s to a form more resembling modern social networking websites. In the early 2000′s a number of companies created a whole new genre of digital networking. Websites became based around user profiles, in which users could express themselves and display friend lists. Friendster was launched in 2002, MySpace in 2003, LinkIn in 2003, and Facebook in 2004; this marked the real rise of social networking as a part of the mainstream Internet and pop culture. People used the sites to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones. As of July 2010 Facebook, the most popular networking service by far, has more than 500 million active users.

In the second half of the decade digital networking was taken to new heights with the introduction of real time, such as Twitter in 2006, and location-based, such as Foursquare in 2009, services. Twitter in a microblogging service, in which users post 140-characters or less “tweets” to their profiles, which other users are instantly updated on if they are followers of that user. Besides its use as a tool of broadcasting a regular user’s activities, Twitter has a notable presence of celebrities. Fans follow their favorite writers, actors, and politicians in order to get up to the minute news about their lives or careers. It has also been used for political means, such as during the 2008 US presidential campaign and 2009 Iranian election protests. Foursquare is a geosocial networking service, which enables users to update their location online via their cell phone. Users geotag locations in their area, giving information and ratings for other users to see. It combines the real time service of Twitter in order to update friends with the business reviews of Yelp. Online networking has progressed from simply keeping in touch with friends to the ability to broadcast a person’s location and activities at any time.

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